The Med School Pulse

Kaplan Test Prep will host our fourth annual Medical School Insider on Monday, April 29th at 8pm ET.  This is our biggest event of the year for pre-meds and you absolutely don’t want to miss it!

The insights revealed at #medInsider are incredible, they’ll really change the way you look at the admissions process!  Be sure to mark your calendar now for this year’s live streaming event. Save your spot by clicking here now!

A sneak peak from one of the questions last year:

What is holistic review in medical school admissions?

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Navigating the waters of medical school admissions can be rough; from the personal statement, to the interview, admissions can seem daunting and confusing before one even begins to apply.  

While many people have opinions about the best way to gain admission, in the end, the only opinions that really matter are those of the admissions committees; after all, they’re the ones that decide whether you’ll be accepted or not. Unfortunately, opportunities to pick the brain of a Dean of Admissions are few and far between. In an effort to shed some light on what admissions committees think about when …

Let’s start today with a simple (?) question:

“Who are you?”

With all respect to Roger Daltrey, this is actually one of the most challenging questions for pre-med students to answer.  And yet, this question is the basis of a major part of your application:  The Personal Statement.

While there just isn’t enough space in a single blog entry to cover every facet of the Personal Statement, there are a couple important themes to keep in mind as you’re coming up with what you plan to write in – what many admissions officers refer to as – “your …

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram.  The list goes on. There are plenty of social networking sites out there that pre-medical students have accounts on and post content to on a daily, if not hourly basis.  While this is a fun, engaging way to maintain some semblance of a social life during the average student’s marathon long study session, there can be repercussions to what content might be being posted.

Earlier this month, I had the great fortune of attending the 2012 AAMC Annual Conference in San Francisco, CA.  This meeting represents one of the largest gatherings of medical educators, premedical advisors, admissions officers, practicing physicians and students in the country, all with one common goal:  your education.  This is the group that writes the MCAT, runs the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) and creates informative resources like Careers in Medicine to help you plan your future medical career.

One of the “hot topics” in medical admissions these days is holistic review.  While a full detailing of this …

Now that 2012 is upon us, I’m sure that all of you, like me, are hard at work on your many New Year’s Resolutions.  Granted, I haven’t had time yet to get in that extra trip to the gym, and it’s tough to eat healthy when it’s so easy to grab a burger on the way home. But really, I’m sure I’ll get down to business next week and we’ll all be well on our way to accomplishing our goals for 2012 by the end of the month, right? Right?

Many of you undoubtedly have high aspirations for the coming …